Senior Cloud Architect - Shape the Future of Enterprise Data in the Cloud

Location: Milpitas CA

Job Type: Full-time

What We're Building at ZL Technologies:

At ZL Technologies (ZL Tech), we're tackling a massive challenge: helping the world's largest companies (think Fortune 100) get a real grip on their exploding amounts of data. We provide cutting-edge solutions for information governance, staying compliant, handling legal matters (eDiscovery), and managing crucial records. For over two decades, our unified platform has been the go-to for organizations looking to truly understand and secure their unstructured data across today's complex cloud and hybrid environments. We're not just managing data; we're unlocking its potential.

We're on the lookout for an exceptional Senior Cloud Architect for leading our cloud vision, establishing robust governance, and driving automation to ensure our cloud operations across AWS, Azure, and GCP are not just efficient and secure, but truly world-class.

Job Profile:

You'll be at the forefront of ZL Tech's journey to becoming a fully cloud-native enterprise.

What You'll Be Doing - Your Core Responsibilities:

Crafting the Cloud Strategy & Ensuring Multi-Cloud Harmony:

Architecting smart, cloud-agnostic solutions that span AWS, Azure, and GCP. This means avoiding vendor lock-in while ensuring we meet all the necessary regulatory requirements (like GDPR, CCPA, SEC 17a-4, FINRA).
Defining, implementing, and rigorously enforcing governance policies using the native tools of each cloud (AWS Organizations, Azure Management Groups, GCP Resource Hierarchies). Your goal? Rock-solid access control, top-notch security, and smart cost management.
Building intuitive, self-service cloud provisioning frameworks. Think Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), policy-driven automation, and sensible quota management.

Building the Cloud Infrastructure & Automating Everything:

Spearheading our Infrastructure as Code (IaC) efforts using industry-leading tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, ARM templates, and Google Deployment Manager. You'll be standardizing how we provision infrastructure across all our clouds.
Designing and automating resilient, multi-region architectures with high availability, robust disaster recovery (DR) capabilities, and intelligent auto-scaling. You'll be leveraging the power of Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE) and serverless technologies (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions).
Establishing seamless end-to-end CI/CD pipelines by integrating tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Google Cloud Build. Your focus will be on accelerating our cloud deployments without compromising quality.
Implementing automated cloud policy enforcement for things like cost control and security compliance using tools like OPA (Open Policy Agent), HashiCorp Sentinel, or AWS SCPs.

Securing Our Cloud Fortress, Ensuring Compliance, and Maintaining Visibility:

Developing and enforcing strict Zero Trust Security architectures, implementing IAM best practices, ensuring least privilege access, and automating security audits across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Implementing comprehensive logging and monitoring solutions across the enterprise using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), alongside cloud-native monitoring (AWS CloudTrail, Azure Monitor, GCP Operations Suite).
Defining and integrating automated threat detection and response mechanisms using services like AWS GuardDuty, Azure Security Center, and Google Security Command Center.
Leading our data encryption strategies, both when data is stored (at rest) and when it's moving (in transit), using services like AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, and GCP Cloud KMS, all while adhering to key standards like NIST, ISO 27001, and SOC 2.

Optimizing Cloud Costs & Embracing FinOps:

Designing and implementing a real-time cloud cost observability framework, leveraging tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and the GCP Billing API.
Establishing smart, automated resource tagging strategies and efficient rightsizing workflows to minimize wasted resources and get the most out of our cloud spending.
Developing proactive budget alerts and smart anomaly detection systems to catch cost spikes early and prevent budget overruns.

What You Need to Succeed:

✔ You have 10+ years of hands-on experience architecting and managing cloud environments across AWS, Azure, and GCP. You've seen it all and know what works.

✔ You're deeply proficient in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and have significant experience with tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, ARM templates, and Google Deployment Manager. You believe in automating infrastructure.

✔ You have extensive experience with Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE) and managing containerized workloads using Docker, Helm, and ideally some experience with service mesh technologies like Istio or Envoy.

✔ You're a skilled coder and automation expert, comfortable with languages like Python, Bash, PowerShell, and ideally have exposure to Go or Ruby.

✔ You're a master of CI/CD pipelines and have hands-on experience with tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Google Cloud Build.

✔ Security is in your DNA. You have a deep understanding of IAM, encryption best practices, and security compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, NIST, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA).

✔ You have a strong grasp of FinOps principles and have experience implementing cost governance frameworks, leveraging reserved and spot instances, and optimizing through auto-scaling.

✔ You're an excellent communicator and a natural leader, capable of driving cloud strategy and collaborating effectively with cross-functional teams.

Nice to Have:

✅ You hold multi-cloud certifications like AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Google Professional Cloud Architect, or Azure Solutions Architect Expert.

✅ You have experience with multi-cloud service mesh technologies like Istio, Consul, or Linkerd.

✅ You have a background in performance testing and benchmarking cloud workloads using tools like JMeter, Locust, or k6.